People's public

AREP's distinctive museum design captures the public's imagination

The City of Beijing's historical museum is located on a major thoroughfare, Fu Xing Men Road, whose entirelength will eventually be punctuated by the city's major cultural amenities. Standing back from the road in orderto create an open space suitable for cultural events and festivals looking out onto the city, the museumfeatures a large roof-structure cantilevered out over the public space.

Composed along the lines of a Chinese palace whose traditional attributes have been rephrased in a resolutelycontemporary vocabulary, in addition to a central courtyard and a stone wall marking the main entrance, themuseum comprises three pavilions built on a unified base.

Each of these uses different materials to identify itsfunction; a wooden box for temporary exhibitions, a grey stone bar for the multimedia library and technicalfacilities, and a tilted bronze cylinder that projects our from the main structure of the building and which housesthe collections of precious artefacts.